Washington DC is a fascinating city for so many reasons. One of them is that you can you can see everything that is great and bad about America all at once. This morning I jogged around the area where I'm staying -- Dupont Circle -- and up through Kalorama and Adam's Morgan. I saw many great things: black women decked out in their Sunday best getting into a taxi for church, a large Latino family walking to a restaurant for breakfast, kids playing in the park, merchants setting up their kiosks for the day. But I also saw some of the ugly side of America: a drunk old man lying in his stench on the side of the street, beer bottles on the ground, boarded up old apartments. Perfectly fine apartments with jail bars on the first-floor and basement windows. Another thing that struck me is how much an area can change from just one block to the next. You can go from a luxury gated apartment to a virtual slum in a matter of seconds. Having been away from Washington for about three years and now being back, this trip has given some new perspectives on the city. I still love it, but something feels different this time.
# posted by Adam Daifallah : 3:03 PM
